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Hilary Putnam has died

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Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#51

Post by cgio »

woodandsteel wrote: post #18

A little background for the non-philosophers. In the history of Western philosophy, there is a great debate. On one side is the foundational-axiomatic position. According to this general view, philosophy correctly done is like geometry. You start out with a limited set of perfectly clear and absolutely certain concepts and prepositions, and then use these to logically deduct everything important about reality. Major…

Given your observation, I think you might enjoy the book "Soul Machine: the invention of modern mind" by George Makari.

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#52

Post by conceit »

Just read the name yesterday linked to "trial-and-error predicates" [2], reading on Neural Nets, super-Turing computation and hypercomputation [1].

[1] mentiones nonrecursive sets of numbers, which seems awfully related to a crackpot theory of mine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation [2] direkt link from the wiki artikel: https://dx.doi.org/10.2307%2F2270581

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#54

Post by woodandsteel »

cgio wrote: post #51
woodandsteel wrote: post #18

A little background for the non-philosophers. In the history of Western philosophy, there is a great debate. On one side is the foundational-axiomatic position. According to this general view, philosophy correctly done is like geometry. You start out with a limited set of perfectly clear and absolutely certain concepts and prepositions, and then use these to logically deduct everything important about reality. Major…

Given your observation, I think you might enjoy the book "Soul Machine: the invention of modern mind" by George Makari.

Looks interesting, I'll have to check it out.

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#55

Post by woodandsteel »

js8 wrote: post #48
woodandsteel wrote: post #18

A little background for the non-philosophers. In the history of Western philosophy, there is a great debate. On one side is the foundational-axiomatic position. According to this general view, philosophy correctly done is like geometry. You start out with a limited set of perfectly clear and absolutely certain concepts and prepositions, and then use these to logically deduct everything important about reality. Major…

"Let me add that the foundational-axiomatic position tends to imply that political rule should be by something like a philosopher-king, while I think the anti-foundational one implies liberal democracy." Really? That's a very strong statement which I would like to see to be backed up with some axioms. :-) (Because both analytic philosophy and democracy seem more preferable to me.)

A foundational-axiomatic view implies a philosopher king because the vast majority of citizens lack the intellectual ability, much less motivation, to understand it and apply it to political decisions.

Anti-foundationalists, in contrast, think that reality is far too complicated for a single person to figure out, and so we need extended democratic discussion. They also tend to believe that average citizens have a considerable degree of rationality and good motivation, and so can be trusted to be responsible voters. This is, of course, imperfect, but as Churchill famously said, it is better than all the alternatives.

As far as analytic philosophy goes, the classic version is foundationalist-axiomatic, but later versions, such as Strawson, are anti-foundationalist. Later Wittgenstein I think is a mixed case.

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#56

Post by woodandsteel »

danidiaz wrote: post #50
woodandsteel wrote: post #18

A little background for the non-philosophers. In the history of Western philosophy, there is a great debate. On one side is the foundational-axiomatic position. According to this general view, philosophy correctly done is like geometry. You start out with a limited set of perfectly clear and absolutely certain concepts and prepositions, and then use these to logically deduct everything important about reality. Major…

> while I think the anti-foundational one implies liberal democracy. With Heidegger a notable exception.

I think Heidegger was only partly anti-foundationalist. At the root of foundationalist-axiomatic philosophy is a denial of experienced finitudes in the area of knowledge, and by implication many other aspects of reality. Heidegger starts out affirming experienced finitudes in his phenomenology of human existence, but then abandons it for a supernaturalistic view of human history in terms of race or later cosmos.
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